Be Happy and Productive in Home Office

Working from home is everyone's dream, right? If that's true, then why did 60 percent of the employees who participated in a Stanford University work-from-home experiment opt to go back to corporate HQ?

The 2013 study offered a sampling of employees in the air travel and hotel booking industry an opportunity to work from home for nine months. Surprisingly, many of them had a very lonely experience. After only a few months, 50 percent of the volunteers and 10 percent of the nonvolunteer group asked to return to their cubicles.

Loneliness and lack of social interaction were cited as the No. 1 reason for abandoning home offices, but these aren't the only drawbacks. How can you have your cake and eat it, too? Because I've successfully worked from home for nearly 16 years, I consider myself an expert on the topic.